Beautiful Nightmare
by Cannibals Welcome
Summary: Dean is having his routine nightmares of hell when it takes a turn for not so horrible. The fallout of his dreams is larger than he would have thought. Destiel, graphic depictions of hell, updates irregular. If I owned Supernatural, the show would look an awful lot like this.
1. Carver Edlund

**A.N. - before you read this, I don't want you to be able to say I didn't warn you. I wrote this when I couldn't sleep, was in a very dark place, and it's the first thing I've been able to finish in a while. If you're touchy about torture and rape and, well, Dean's hell, I would suggest pressing the red x in the top right hand corner of your screen. If for whatever reason you still wanna read this, here it is.**

My skin is gone.

They didn't go through the whole tearing flesh off piece by piece until there's nothing but blood vessels and bone and muscles and tendons left. A snap of their fingers and the pale, soft, oh-so-fragile casing is simply... gone.

Everywhere I am exposed in the most literal of ways. Not a centimeter of my skin is left, and not a drop of blood spills.

Well, maybe they didn't take all off my wrapping off. And as soon as I realize that my favorite appendage is still completely intact, I know what's coming next.

I know that they'll take me dry and hard without even the mercy of blood for lubricant. I know the shame and humiliation that will come when soft heat envelops me with skill built through countless centuries of practice. Know that tongue will take me to the brink and hold me there. It won't surprise me when fingers dig into my ribcage and slide into the pliable meat.

I know even before I try and blink that they've taken my eyelids so I can't sink into the dark, have secured my head so I have to watch the same thing being done to my father.

When they're finished, when they're finally, finally finished I can't even work myself to a close. Instead they wash the horrors away with boiling water, and I stay so impossibly hard and _make it stop_.

I know every sensation of what's going to happen, know the agony that now sears my nerve endings is just the beginning to what is approaching.

This intimate knowledge and surety I have are what makes the light so ludicrous, so unbelievable. If I was allowed to hallucinate, that is what I would have written it off as.

It's too brilliant to be described by human words. It radiates a sense of warmth and safety and comfort and forgiveness that I have not felt in... that I have never felt, not even when my mother was alive and the worst punishment I could receive was having my favorite blanket taken away.

The light replaces the unbearable heat with a cool, soothing temperature. My skin doesn't bother to regrow in the same way it had never bothered to have been removed – it's just there when the light makes contact. And it's so many things at once, so hot hot hot where it clutches my arm but I _can't_ care. I feel the light spreading through that touch, its purity healing and saving and rebuilding what _they_ had spent years tearing down.

I close my eyes and focus on the mere sensation of it, of hoping that this isn't a new form of torture. That this being will be torn away from me and replace with Alistair's cruel smile, with my father's skinless and shrieking face.

But it isn't, or they're just dragging it out. It doesn't leave me. When I work up the courage and will to open my eyes again I'm somewhere dim and warm, someone holding me close and singing in soft tones. I don't know the language, don't recognize the words or their meanings, but it just _does not_ matter.

I want to say something, anything, any words that can begin to describe what I'm experiencing. I think of angels and their halos of white light, and I'll be damned (again) if it isn't the closest explanation I can grasp.

"Angel. My – angel." My voice is coarse and quiet and barely there, but I know my angel hears it. The hands wrapped around me tug me closer, stroking and restoring and healing where they touched.

We stay like that for an eternity or a second and I can't tell which one it is. At some point I feel my eyes begin to drift closed and I fight sleep I've been held from since I died.

The angel holds me, and I drift into an oblivion far too good to be true.

My eyes blink open and my angel is still with me.

Its face is human, its hair is black and its eyes are blue and its lips are chapped, but I know the light inside of the shell. Something in me vaguely registers that my angel's shell is male, but it seems such an insignificant detail.

What this angel did for me I have no way of repaying. I know few things, and of those few know nearly nothing of how to express gratitude. How to even in the slightest way return the peace I'd received. I search for something, for the best thing I can offer but there's nothing.

And then I realize. I know how to give the human equivalent on heaven on earth, know it could never begin to compare, but that was the best thing I'd ever had before this... contentment.

Even as my hand grasps the back of my angel's neck, even as my lips press to his and I trail fingers down the ridges of his spine, even as I lick the hollow under his ear and his eyes dilate and his mouth opens in a strangled groan – even then I know I'm missing something, missing something I knew, missing his _name_.

But then I have it, and I breath it into the smooth skin of his neck, growl it into the line of his jaw, scream it as he grips-

"_Dean!"_

A yell breaks through the dream and I jerk upright before my mind has even realized I was asleep. Everything is white static and gray fog for a beautiful moment, and then the memories crash into me.

"Seriously dude, snoring is _one _thing, but I can-fucking-_not_ sleep through your wet dreams." Sam's voice is tired, irritated. I pray to anyone who's listening that I didn't say Cas' name out loud.

"Then get another fucking room, Sammy." I grumble, faking a drowsiness that is rapidly evaporating. I flip onto my left side and curl around my pillow.

Something soft thumps against the back of my skull and I respond as eloquently as I could have ever hoped. "Bitch."

Sam lets out an exhausted snort and mumbles something that might have been 'jerk'.

As I drift back into the darkness, eyes suddenly once again heavy with sleep, I send out a silent prayer.

Please, _please_ God – if Cas heard any, _any, _of that just – just wipe it out of his memories.

On the other side of the country an angel sits on a park bench in the middle of a deserted park. The angel prays that Dean doesn't remember what he had dreamed in the morning. The angel prays that the alcohol that allows him to sleep will lock his memories in an impenetrable haze.

The angel prays that the next time he takes Dean out of his nightmares, the man won't make him fall that little bit farther from heaven. That Dean will allow him to pretend that he doesn't grasp the concept of personal space. To pretend that he can't see into thoughts Dean barely acknowledges, that the angel doesn't hold their reflection under layers of things he never wants to think about.

Somewhere Carver Edlund laughs quietly to himself as his fingers type the final words in a scene that will never be published.

He may uphold this charade of a prophet writing horrible prose to pay the bills, and as amusing as it would be to see Dean and Castiel's reaction, he would prefer to avoid the fallout of Dean trying to insert a silver bullet into poor Carver's brain.


	2. Snow Angel

**A.N. I love Dean, I do. I just love torturing him a little bit more. This story was supposed to be a one shot but it's cathartic for me to write.**

Cold.

So cold.

Shouldn't it have been _hot?_ Shouldn't there be someone leering over him with a pitchfork, berating him for every sin he'd committed in his life time of fuck ups?

But there wasn't. Instead it was just. So. Cold.

Everywhere he looked it was blindingly white. Snow covered the landscape, patches of ice pushing particularly sharp shards of sun into his retinas. Everything so... _pure._ Just by standing here Dean was tainting it.

But – a difference. Color, he could see color somewhere just over – over _there_. Yes, he could reach it if he started moving now.

Dean tore himself from the need to curl into a ball and conserve heat. He tripped and shivered himslef over to that dot of color, trying to ignore the way the cold prickled into every nerve on the soles of his feet. With all he had he pretended he hadn't noticed he was naked in the middle of fucking Antartica.

When he reached the color, he wished he'd never tried to find it.

It was Cas. He knew it right away, knew it even though Cas was soaked in so much blood and.. other things that – figuratively speaking – his own mother wouldn't have known him. But that wasn't the worst part. No, that was pretty much every other week. The worst part was the wing marks.

Dean couldn't even count how many times he'd watched that stupid angel die. Had never cared to keep a tally sheet of the number of trips people had taken to the great beyond and back. Honestly, it had stopped hitting him that hard when someone did... pass. He had to wait a couple of weeks until the enormity really began to set in, before he realized that _that_ was actually it.

But even though he'd seen Cas go – well, wherever the fuck angels go whenever they die – so many times, he'd never seen the scorched outline of wings on the ground.

The snow only amplified the image, intensified what he was seeing with the stark contrast.

An impossible sound came from behind him, and he turned.

Never in his _life_ had he been so glad to hear Cas invading his personal space.

And then there was a shove and he toppled ass over teacups into the blood soaked snow.

"_You_ did this to me." The syllables were snarled at Dean, who could only stare as the trench coated figure stalked towards him. Could only let loose a harsh breath at the tattered, matte black wings hanging from his angel's back.

"I _fell_ for you. I _fell_ for this pathetic _excuse_ for a righteous man." Cas straddled Dean, hard and unwelcome pressure on already agonized pieces pieces of his anatomy.

"Please, Cas-" Dean was stopped by a large, thin hand crushing his windpipe.

"There you go again." The voice was mocking, unhinged, so _not his Cas_. "Always something to ask, something to an ungrateful self righteous _ape_ about." Every pause was emphasized with a grind of the angel's hips and a squeeze of fingers.

_God please no no please – _too late. Dean was getting hard. It should have been impossible. He was fucking freezing to death, if Cas' chokehold didn't send him there first. He couldn't decide whether the burning lungs or the stabs of pain in his chest when Cas spoke were worse. But like the soldier it belonged to, his dick rose to the occasion.

A disgusted look Dean hadn't even thought _could_ cover Castiel's face appeared.

"And this." Cas demonstrated exactly what he meant with a harsh jerk of his pelvis. "You don't think I can _feel_ you lusting after me? You think you can _hide_ it from both of us? You have no _clue_ that every dream, every fantasy, every _cold shower_ pushes me that much closer to being nothing but a – a _human._"

Cas spat out the word like it was something filthy, something that he was ashamed to have let touch his tongue in the first place.

Dean was waiting for the black to encroach on his vision, waiting for anything but this absolute nightmare. Desperate for when the burn for oxygen let him fade into nothing.

_Cas._ He prayed silently, franticly. _Stop this. Cas, this can't be you, please tell me this isn't -_

The Castiel choking Dean evaporated. No, he simply ceased to exist. The snow and barren land followed his example and shifted into a hotel room. Dean recognized it instantly. It was the nicest place he'd ever stayed the to the dream this had to be, Dean was in a pair of plaid pajama pants he hadn't seen since Sammy left for Stanford. Little bitch, they wouldn't have even fit him.

"Cas?" He asked aloud.

"I'm here, Dean." The voice was exasperated more than furious and it healed something inside of Dean to hear it.

He spun, and saw Cas sitting very uncomfortably in the center of the bed. The just-right bed that had given him the best sleep of his _life_. The 7 solid hours bed. He would have known it anywhere. Cas was in nothing but boxers with tiny – giggle – angel wings, which might explain his discomfort. It most certainly could not have been the mattress. But that wasn't why (at least not entirely why) Dean stared.

It was Cas' wings.

Dean hadn't paid much attention to them when he'd been, you know, _dying –_ but they were beautiful. Not ragged but black and silky and so so so soft and shimmering with things he could just _almost see -_

"Fuck, man." His voice was dazed as he approached the bed, climbed across it until he was invading Cas' personal space (something he wasn't aware the angel had).

Cas backed away from him, face awkward. "I didn't want to wake you so I shifted the dream. You seemed to have... trapped me here."

Dean didn't hear a word of it. "They're _beautiful_."

"Ah. Yes. The wings." Cas fidgeted and scooched away from Dean futiely, pull himself back until he hit the headboard. "It's how you picture them. I believe you once heard that any color a human can't see is translated automatically to black. I saw it when-"

"Yeah, I think I remember reading that somewhere." Dean was floating, his entire world tied to those feathers. "I wanna touch 'em."

"I'd rather you – _oh_." The breath that escaped Cas was simply incredible, and Dean grazed his fingertips against the wings just to hear it again.

"That – fuck – that – that _shouldn't_ – ah!" Cas let out an almost scream when hands traced the base of his wings.

"Thought they'd be sensitive." If Dean was even aware he was speaking, he might have noticed he sounded smug as hell. "Wanted them to be. Imagined making you cum just by touching them..."

"Stop, Dean, please, there, there there-"

"Dean!"

Goddamnit, the fucker could cockblock even in Dean's _dreams_.

More than he'd ever wanted anything, Dean wanted to throttle his brother. But there was a note of genuine panic to his yell, so fuck he might have a good reason...

"What the hell is so-" Dean griped as he sat up and pried his eyes open through sheer force of will.

"It's Cas. He's gone catatonic." Sam was uncharicteristically not making a bitchface. He was pure anxiety, every giant inch of him.

"I am no longer impaired, Sam."

Oh, fuck.

There was Cas, sitting at the foot of Dean's bed.

Oh, _fuck_.

There was Cas, pants too snug around the groin and eyes fixed firmly everywhere but Dean.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck_fuck._

There was Dean's memory of dream Cas saying something about how he'd changed a nightmare only to be caught in a wet dream.

"Fuck me." The words tripped their way out of Dean's mouth and into the world before he was even aware of their delivery.

"I would prefer not to, Dean."

And then Cas was gone.


	3. Increasing Velocity

**A.N. - Hey. The perspective jumps around quite a bit, I know, but I write it the way I find best suited for the scene. Thanks to my two favs, shiroiokami and Nagaku Tsuzuku Yami and to my alert Mrs. Furb. I would really appreciate a review, even if it's just 'meh' or something. Interesting note: The last two chapters had exactly the same word count. This whole thing takes place sort of vaguely during the Apocalypse. **

The nightmares got worse.

There was no angel to ride to his rescue, no comforting rustle of wings to wake him in the night and let him know that even if Cas didn't have time to talk he checked in when he could. No healing touch that woke him, that reminded him someone had a faith in him borderline insane.

When Cas did appear, it was briefly. He spoke only to Sam, pointedly refusing to even _look_ at Dean.

Sam had tried to pull what had happened out of Dean too damn many times. Dean spent pretty much all his time holed up in a car with that kid, and if Sam made _one more_ of those _fucking _looks when he thought Dean couldn't see...

Fantasizing about melting Sam's eyes out of his skull offered a pleasant alternative to thinking. It took his mind off of where the hell to even _begin_ trying to fix what had happened with Cas.

Bobby had once told Dean that he should put himself in the other person's shoes, try to see the problem from their perspective. Dean had snorted this tip off and promptly never thought of it again. But now - things were so fucked up he'd do almost anything, the least of which being a girly mental exercise.

_Okay, so I'm an incredibly old and powerful celestial being. I save this human from hell who started the apocalypse and is now supposed to fix it. After dragging the idiot kicking and screaming out of the Pit, I put his body back together before sticking him into his brand new meat suit._

_Wait, no, this was wrong. Cas probably used much bigger words when he was thinking. Damn it. Anyways..._

_The moron shows his gratitude by summoning me and then attempting to kill me in various and ineffective ways. From the second that he realizes he can't kill me, he swallows his terror response and goes straight to obtuse sarcastic asshole mode. 'Thank you' just doesn't seem to be in his vocabulary._

_Then the disgusting little creature has the nerve to lust after me. It thinks it's so clever, thinks its a secret, buries it so deep inside that it hardly comes out even in dreams. Of course it isn't the first time that a human has fallen in love with an angel - drawn like moths to a flame._

_It's the first time one had caused me to question my entire way of life, though. The first time I've disobeyed, cut myself off from my home and family, because I was convinced through magic or osmosis or hoodoo that 1/2 of the planet shouldn't be exterminated so Michael and Lucifer can act out a predetermined quarrel. It's all good though, cuz I'm Cas and that means I look so hard for good in humans that I invent qualities that aren't there. Obviously Dean is right, being the righteous man and all._

_It's all good until I'm trapped in a dream after attempting to alleviate a nightmare. It's a betrayal of the worst kind, Dean playing out a perverted fantasy with me._

This is where Dean always freezes up, stops, sets it on the back burner. If he doesn't, it will just devolve into insults. Actually, it usually already has.

Bobby is suspicious and Sam is beyond certain that something is wrong. They both assume that Dean fucked something up and is too stupid to apologize. Dean doesn't bother to tell them how right they are. He wouldn't even know where to begin explaining. It would all add up to one response from both of them anyways - backing hastily out of the room with hands clapped over their ears, yelling 'too much information!' at the top of their lungs.

* * *

Dean couldn't be sure what made him pray to Cas. The rotgut helped, that was for sure. It was quiet and Sammy had gotten lucky. Even with the drone of the Shamwow guy the air was heavy, silent, pressing in and suffocating him. He was so, so, so achingly _alone._ He'd had this hole in his chest before, had more than once felt the nothing he craved try to drag him under. Some days he didn't understand why he bothered to get out of bed. If he didn't know there was an afterlife, if he didn't know there wasn't going to be peaceful oblivion - if Dean didn't know he would have to live with himself for eternity then he would pull the trigger right now, God fucking help him.

He knew for sure why he hadn't prayed to Cas previously. It was because his - no, _the_ - angel would probably smite him into the next town. He'd looked smitey when he was around Dean lately.

And despite that, despite the fear and tiny hope that Cas would kill him, despite wanting nothing more than to drown himself in a bottle... well, he just couldn't take the emptiness of the room and the breathing nothing that surrounded him. Even a pissed off angel would be better than being alone with _himself_.

So Dean turned down the Shamwow dude and opened his mouth.

"Cas... I.. God, I'm just sorry. So sorry. I didn't - I mean, just please man. I can't keep - I _need_ you." Dean felt something hot and bitter and stinging fill his chest and eyes. He closed them and curled in on himself so that it would all hopefully _stop_. "I can't _do _this anymore, Cas. I just - just want it to end. I thought it was bad before - no, I stopped thinking at all - but I didn't know how much you were keeping from me. I can't break down now, Cas. I _can't. _Just-"

Dean felt the first trickle of cold run down his cheek. Some part of him was making fun of how, all on his own, he had manufactured the biggest chick flick moment he'd ever encountered. The rest agreed that pulling the blanket over his head and going full fetal position was a great idea.

"I can't take everything that happened in Hell and keep going. I can't do it on my own and I'm _sorry_ because you've done so much already and I don't have the right to ask for anything more. But if just, if just till the end of all this shit you could pretend you give a shit about me - I swear on Sammy's life I will never, ever ask another damn thing of you. _Please, _Castiel."

* * *

Cas would never be able to say precisely what made him decide to answer Dean. Maybe it was the multiple apologies. Cas'd never heard him apologize for anything to anyone, unless it was one of those reflex 'I'm sorry's. He was very actions-speak-louder-than-words. Truth did not come naturally to him, not if it had to be spoken aloud. He was a professional liar, an actor of the highest caliber. Sometimes he even managed to fool Cas. More often he just fooled himself.

But that wasn't what made him show up. He was aware of all that already, could feel it written in every line of Dean's body that he refused to look at. It might have been because Dean had said his full name, because when the prayer slammed into him he couldn't help but listen to everything he'd blocked out. All of _Dean_ that he had blocked out. Cas could feel Dean's mind nearly fracturing with the strain of hell and everything else. In the space of a moment he knew Dean's agony, the desperation as he reached out - going to what was literally his last resort.

Cas hadn't known the power of his absentminded healing. Hadn't realized that by sheer proximity he was keeping Dean sane, a constant reminder that he was loved and forgiven by nothing less than heaven itself.

There were still the usual issues, of course. Dean still drank like it would kill him to stop, still fornicated with the frantic motions of a dying man. Cas feared for when or if he wasn't there to heal the damage routinely self inflicted. Before Dean died he'd contracted HIV, including a few STD's that they didn't have a name for in the states yet. This would have gone completely unnoticed until he was forced to face the much more pressing matter of organs failing. Dean had always assumed that he wouldn't live long enough for it to matter.

Cas had recreated every cell of Dean, bound them together with bits of Grace and Dean's own soul. The pieces of Cas that lingered attempted to soothe and heal what they could on a regular basis, but...

Without his presence, those bits got weaker.

Cas had watched Dean finish the prayer, watched him not bother to lift the blanket and glance around the room.

"Dean." He said.

His human needed him. He could deal with the ever increasing velocity of his descent later.

**A.N. II - if anyone was out of character by a lot, feel free to bitch me out in the review that you will hopefully leave.**


	4. Trap of My Own Making

**A.N. I am just sort of shamelessly begging. I see the favs, alerts and views but... seriously, only source of feedback dudes. Thank you to Zyephen (cool name) for favoriting and alerting.****This will be fairly short and ooc, but ... it needed to be done. Don't judge me. I have great excuses. And thanks to the anon Angel who was my first review. :D**

I was fairly certain I'd never moved so fast. Ever.

I figured I'd fallen asleep, figured this had to be a dream because Cas was _answering my prayer_, was voluntarily _speaking_ with me. I hadn't realized that I'd thought the rest of the time he was in my life would be like this.

So empty. So very, very empty.

I grabbed Cas and nearly sobbed with relief when he didn't immediately flitter away. I was crushing him to me so hard that a human wouldn't have been able to breathe. I was waiting for the part of the dream where it all turned bad, was on edge because as soon as I relaxed it would turn into a nightmare.

But... this felt awfully real for a dream, didn't it?

"You're not dreaming, Dean." Cas' voice was his usual monotone, though there was a hint of something that could have been exasperation in it.

I squeezed him harder - well, I loosened my grip for a moment so I could squeeze him harder. I was _never_ letting this bastard go again. "I'm sorry Cas, I didn't - I mean, I thought it was a dream which it was sort of - just - I _never_ would have..."

I didn't have anything else to say. I was shit at apologies, part of why I never made them in so many words. "Sorry."

"I know." Cas' voice had a tentatively soothing note to it, like he wasn't quite sure what pitch he should be hitting, what words he should be saying to convey the human emotion of sympathy. This socially awkward, slightly uncomfortable and always amusing form of conversation - this is what I had been missing. "I forgive you."

I made a noise that was _absolutely totally not tell Sam and I'll kill you _a sob-whimper-whine and attempted to press him even closer. Since I would have to crawl inside his skin to do that, I settled for another one of those squeezes.

* * *

If I was human I was certain Dean would have broken several bones vital to my continued survival. That is, if I didn't asphyxiate first.

I gently restored the pieces of his soul I could, knowing the rest could only heal with my continued presence. I didn't have much to do past the Winchesters anyways. I was looking for _God_ - if he was even on this planet, in this solar system, if he would allow me to find him, if he hadn't truly abandoned us.

"Dean, you're beginning to hurt yourself." I told him this as gently as I knew how, wincing at the flare of pure terror that came with my words. His body was quivering, protesting the extended effort.

I pried him off me and tried to not notice the broken noises in his throat. This was my fault. The fault of my pride and cowardice.

"Sleep now." I told him quietly, touching his face carefully with my hand. His mind bucked against the order for a few moments, caving when I assured it I wasn't leaving. Dean sagged in my arms and I used my 'mojo' to strip him into his usual sleepware - boxers and the t-shirt he'd shoplifted out of a Walmart 3 years back.

I was going to have to stay with him for the next few days with as little physical distance between us as possible. The threat of his soul rejecting his body, of tearing itself to bits, was too great.

I settled him into his motel bed, and removed my vessel's clothing until we were in a similar state. The more skin to skin contact, the better.

The less time I would spend in this horrible trap of my own making.

I curled my body against Dean's, closed my eyes, and slipped into his nightmares.

**A.N. so yeah, that was shorter and cornier than anything before it, but needed to be done. Man, the bitch face Sam is gonna make..**


End file.
